Podcast: God Squad: Love thy neighbor. No exceptions?
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U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to the White House on Oct. 7, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/TCA)
Trump’s war on Canada a pitiful own goal
Aug 29, 2026
This summer, America played host to one of the biggest international events on the planet, the World Cup, drawing millions of foreigners to our cities and towns, our stadiums and our national parks, where many of them had never been before.
The consensus was, America is awesome — visitors from Bolivia, Scotland, Uzbekistan, and everywhere in between marveled at the sheer size of our great nation, the diversity of our topography, the deliciousness of our foodstuffs, and, perhaps most importantly, the kindness of our people. (Not to mention, our eighth wonder of the world — Buc-ee’s.)
What a difference a month makes.
Despite our friends in far-flung places singing our praises, now, to hear our closest neighbors tell it, America is nothing but a “ bully” and a “ thug.”
After trade negotiations with Canada collapsed this week, and President Trump announced a whopping 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods — including Canadian whiskey and hockey sticks — it’s no surprise our friends to the north are less than pleased with their downstairs neighbors.
In our defense, not all of us are responsible for electing the bully and thug in question — and if polls are any indication, most Americans agree with Canada that Trump is doing a terrible job. But still, it’s hard to hear.
Especially since we love Canadians, and we very much want them to love us back.
But after spending years threatening to invade Canada and make it the “51st state,” and mocking its leaders with petty nicknames and school yard insults, Trump may have finally put Canadians’ famous politeness to the test.
“You’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney. “We’re going to hit back.”
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew called Trump “erratic,” “irresponsible,” and “a bad person” who was “not to be trusted.”
And Ontario Premier Doug Ford wasn’t nearly as nice, calling Trump the “king of bankruptcies,” and telling him to “Kiss my ass.”
Again, these are our friends talking!
But their righteous indignation is justified — we are in the midst of an unpopular war that we can’t seem to end, our economy is in the toilet, we’re banning books, deporting children with cancer, shooting unarmed protesters, spreading measles, and covering up for one of our most notorious sex offenders. And we have the audacity to attack our nice and normal friends?
But it’s not just an issue of bad manners. Americans have long been accused of that.
It may be an election issue now.
States like Michigan, Maine, Alaska and Ohio, all of which border Canada and are important trade partners, also have another thing in common: highly competitive Senate races.
And despite all but Maine voting for Trump in the last election, Cook Political Report lists all four as a toss-up.
The Canada trade issue is real these voters; for auto workers in Michigan who rely on Canadian aluminum and steel; for 95% of Mainers who rely on Canada for home heating; for Ohioans who use Canadian metals and machinery; for Alaskans who need Canadian crude.
So Democratic Senate candidates like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Mary Peltola in Alaska have yet another important talking point to add to their reservoirs — that Trump’s dumb trade war, much like his dumb actual war, is going to make voters’ lives worse.
Add it to the pile — a majority of voters already believe they are worse off under Trump, and this won’t help.
With fewer than 70 days until the midterm elections, the imprudence of picking a fight with important allies — who now seem prepared to unleash retaliatory economic pain on Americans in competitive states hardly seems debatable.
But Trump seems hell bent on totally destroying whatever good will we still had left on the world stage.
Talk about an own goal.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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After a Title VI complaint from the Equal Protection Project, USC cut in-person Youth Leadership Institute programming. Students share the fallout
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A Complaint Against HSF’s Youth Leadership Institute Shows Why DEI Matters for All Students
Aug 28, 2026
On June 29, the Equal Protection Project (EPP), a 501(c)(3) that challenges DEI initiatives through legal action at universities across the country, filed a civil rights complaint against the University of Southern California (USC) and Loyola Marymount University (LMU).
The complaint cites the involvement of both universities in hosting the Youth Leadership Institute, a summer program that flies out upwards of 500 Hispanic rising high school seniors to Los Angeles for a five-day intensive, teaching them about the college application process, financial literacy, and expanding their networks to student mentors who previously attended the program.
The EPP states that in hosting the program, USC and LMU have violated Title VI rights, which prohibit the use of federal funds for discriminatory practices based on race.
In an email to the Fulcrum, EPP Founder William Jacobson states that the program set off alarms for the EPP due to its alleged “discriminatory” nature.
“Here, the universities were involved at every step in the process, including promotion, programming, hosting, and housing. This conduct implicated not only the civil rights laws but also laws prohibiting discrimination in temporary housing,” wrote Jacobson. “So all-around, this set off all the civil rights alarms, and after evaluation, we came to the conclusion that a formal administrative complaint was the proper path to achieve equal protection for students.”
The YLI isn’t the only program targeted by the EPP. Since its 2023 inception, the project has taken action against nearly 550 programs and scholarships nationwide for similarly discriminatory practices, according to its website.
But does a program that hosts Hispanic students of all backgrounds, races, and identities truly violate Title VI rights? What do students who’ve attended the program believe?
In 2025, I had the honor of being part of the YLI, alongside nearly 500 peers from across the country, none of whom I had previously known. By the end of June, I was flying across the country from my home in Boca Raton, Fla., to Los Angeles, Calif., to meet the other students from my cohort and the mentor I was paired with.
Following the Civil Complaint, USC quietly withdrew from hosting the program, and the YLI was shifted to a five-day virtual format, leaving 250 students who would’ve had the same opportunity I had a little over a year ago.
Lucca Rodríguez Pedraza also participated in last year’s YLI and is now headed off to the University of California at Berkeley for her undergraduate studies. About a week before heading off to Los Angeles to serve as a mentor-in-training for this year’s YLI cohort, she was informed that the in-person program would be replaced by a virtual component.
The program, which is usually held between June at LMU and July at USC, had proceeded with its June programming as scheduled, but had its USC dates canceled at the last minute.
Pedraza shares that hearing the news was difficult, especially as she had watched her peers participate in LMU programming only weeks earlier.
“So many of my friends who had gone back to Loyola… talked to me about how refreshing it was to see the whole process from a mentor perspective. I was also building connections with my mentees and with my familia, as well as understanding that these kids did need guidance and did need help,” Pedraza said.
To participate in the in-person component, students must be selected from an applicant pool of over 6,500 and complete a two-day virtual component lasting over six hours each day. According to LMU’s website, 100% of participants are in the top 5% ranking of their class and have an average unweighted GPA of 3.94.
“It was really disappointing to see such an amazing program and something that's helped me so much, just you know, be taken away from these kids, especially because they like they earned it,” said Pedraza.
Nathalie De Paula, a rising senior from Connecticut, was selected to be a part of this year’s cohort at USC but was informed at the last minute of the program’s cancellation. She shares that hearing the news devastated her.
“I was expecting to meet so many people and make so many friends, especially since in my school, it's hard to meet like-minded people. I had heard all these amazing experiences because my mentor went to USC last year, and she was telling me all the amazing things. I was like, ‘Wow, I'm really gonna get a lot out of this.’”
Anthony Rodas, a 2026 mentor-in-training at LMU, shared the impact the YLI had on him last year.
“I think my experience at the YLI was transformative,” said Rodas. “I am the first in my family to go to undergrad here in the U.S., so… I didn't really have a lot of guidance in that. And through the YLI, it was kind of like a whole new world opening up… It really felt like I found a strong community there. As soon as I stepped foot onto the LMU campus… I just felt like there was so much future opportunity that could come from an experience like that.”
Through the program, Rodas was able to meet students who had attended Brown and other prestigious universities and came from backgrounds similar to his own. He was inspired to apply and has since committed to Brown University for his undergraduate studies.
Rodas strongly believes that without his experience at the YLI, we wouldn't have been inspired to attend the school, which is ranked #13 among national universities by U.S. News and World Report.
“It really opened my eyes about what that school was and how much more of a fit I would be there than some of the other schools I was considering. I think if I hadn't done the YLI, first of all, I wouldn't have felt anywhere near prepared enough, like apply and actually get accepted. But second of all, I probably wouldn't have even, maybe not have chosen that school to be the one that I ended up at.”
Growing up, I was always told that attending a top-tier institution was an experience reserved for the upper echelon of society, and that going to college far from home wasn’t something I would be capable of — whether I was told that by my peers or from my tight-knit Hispanic family, it didn’t matter; the consensus was overwhelmingly that it wasn’t possible.
In the U.S., Hispanics make up only about 13% of all students enrolled at private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, according to a study by UnidosUS, and are ranked among the least likely to be enrolled in college or to hold bachelor's degrees.
In recent years, it has been revealed that many public flagship universities use discriminatory practices when it comes to enrollment, barring many Latino and African American students from setting foot on their campuses.
But “Latino” isn’t the only term used to describe Hispanic students, and the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” cannot necessarily be used interchangeably — neither term is classified as a race by the U.S. Census. Admittedly, Hispanics represent one of the most racially and ethnically diverse groups in the country.
Emelyn de la Peña, president of the National Association for Diversity Officers in Higher Education, has worked on initiatives and in offices centered around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the past 30 years.
De la Peña explains that the goals of organizations like the EPP aren’t to make higher education more equitable, but rather more equal — she notes that this goal isn’t always better in the end.
“We can respond to a particular need without losing sight of our responsibility to the broader community; we can take non-discrimination seriously and take disparities in educational opportunities seriously at the same time,” said De la Peña. “I think that if we have a commitment to fair opportunity and a commitment to understanding where barriers exist, so we can eliminate barriers, then we have to look at who is showing up at particular barriers.”
When asked about USC’s cancellation of the programming, Jacobson stated that the goal of the complaint wasn’t to necessarily get the program canceled entirely, but to protect against federal Title VI violations.
“As a general matter, our goal is not to terminate discriminatory programs, but to remove the discrimination. So these programs lawfully can run on college campuses that receive federal funding, but the programs cannot discriminate based on national origin,” wrote Jacobson.
Regardless, the in-person programming for the event was canceled. The EPP boasts over 175 wins between its attacks on scholarships and higher education programming since its inception.
It’s a flawed logic to assume that asking the Department of Education to investigate a program wouldn’t cause ripples in the program's very own livelihood, and the EPP’s “wins” are nothing less than proof that their goal isn’t just to play a corrective role in programs such as the YLI.
“Ultimately, I think that's what diversity, equity, and inclusion has done: is that when we try to lift up the most marginalized, we lift up everybody,” said De La Peña.
Pedraza feels that the program, if anything, embraces the diverse roots of its participants.
“To me, being Hispanic, being Latino is to be diverse. It is to be multicultural, and like we are, you know, historically oppressed or historically have less advantages, and so these programs are so important to help higher education and to become more diverse to help give students opportunities,” said Pedraza.
De La Peña believes that the importance of programs like the YLI lies in the questions they raise about accessibility and equity. She believes that in cutting programs that value equity over equality, the most help for all students is shortened.
“Ultimately, I think that's what diversity, equity, and inclusion has done: is that when we try to lift up the most marginalized, we lift up everybody,” said De La Peña.
Gabriela Quintero is an incoming freshman at Barnard College of Columbia University, pursuing her B.A. in Political Science and Economics. Interested in politics, migration, policy, and culture, she hopes to pursue a career in political and cultural journalism.
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In an aerial view, the Stargate Oracle AI data center campus is seen on August 26, 2026 in Abilene, Texas. The Stargate Oracle AI data center will span roughly 4 million square feet and will be operated by Oracle for OpenAI. The facility is the first Stargate site to go live and is expected to be fully completed by the end of 2026.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Why Communities Nationwide Are Halting AI Data Centers
Aug 28, 2026
More Americans of all political stripes are growing anxious over the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies, and a popular backlash is brewing. At university graduations, commencement speakers who have cited the alleged benefits of AI have been met with resounding boos from graduates who feel AI has displaced them from jobs. With no federal law regulating AI, all 50 state governments have proposed measures to regulate everything from employment algorithms to deepfakes to child safety.
Lately, the strongest protest has emerged in America's heartland, with one issue fueling local opposition: the rapid proliferation of massive data centers used for cloud storage and artificial intelligence computations. Across America, more than 4,400 data centers currently exist, and a University of Michigan report found that just one center can consume as much electricity as 2,000 homes. They also use large amounts of water for cooling, with a typical data center using 300,000 gallons of water each day (about the same as 1,000 households). But very large data centers can use an estimated 5 million gallons of water each day, which is similar to the daily usage of a town with 10,000 to 50,000 residents.
That level of consumption can overload a local water supply, especially in arid areas, as well as overwhelm the electric grid capacity. Utilities have had to invest in infrastructure upgrades, and they pass those costs onto consumers, resulting in higher electric and water bills.
Resistance from both right and left
Now dozens of those communities are mobilizing to halt the spread of data centers in their geographic area. And not just in the usual progressive enclaves where one might expect such opposition. One type of resistance has been a push by local organizers for moratoriums against data center development in their town, city or state. A recent poll found nearly two-thirds of voters in the US opposed building the centers in their communities. In conservative Luther, Oklahoma, once word leaked that the mayor was in secret backroom negotiations with the company Beltline to strike a deal, townspeople showed up by the dozens at city council meetings in June. Bending to the local pressure, the city council passed a six-month moratorium on data centers.
In Monterey Park, California, residents voted in June 2026 to permanently ban data centers, becoming the first city to do so by ballot. Over 100 towns and cities have passed temporary moratoriums or outright bans on data centers. Numerous cities and counties, from New Orleans to Tulsa to Seattle, Oklahoma City, Orange County, North Carolina, Prince George's County, Maryland, and other parts of the country, have paused new developments to evaluate local impacts.
In New York, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul imposed a one-year construction moratorium on data centers using 50 megawatts or more of power, making New York the first US state to enact a full moratorium. MAGA Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas recently announced a pause on new data centers until the state can conduct a thorough review of their impact on the state's resources; this followed a report from the agency that operates the state's electrical grid that it is considering connection requests for electricity to feed data centers equal to 474 gigawatts, which is five times Texas’s peak electric demand. Thirteen other states have introduced moratorium bills to pause data center construction.
Part of what is fueling the anger is that elected officials often negotiate in secret with the corporate owners of the data centers. Rural people are being asked to give up land and their quality of life, and for what? This is much more than being Luddites. Public anger over fast-track zoning, massive water and electricity demands, and secretive non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) between local governments and AI contractors has led to accusations of political corruption. Lawmakers in Ohio and other states have faced ethics investigations over undisclosed industry ties or energy committee leadership while handling massive tech-sector utility legislation. The attorney general of Michigan, the state’s top law enforcement officer, is suing Michigan’s own public service commission for working behind closed doors to quickly rubberstamp a massive data center without public input.
Recalls of elected officials
With public anger rising, dozens of communities have launched recall petitions to oust local officials for supporting large-scale data centers. In Festus, Missouri, a bright-red MAGA area where Donald Trump won 67 percent of the presidential vote in 2024, residents have filed a petition to recall the mayor and three council members over their approval of a $6 billion data center. Lyon Township, Michigan, Fort Meade, Florida, Box Elder County, Utah, Temple and San Angelo, Texas and other conservative towns are also mounting recalls.
At least 33 distinct recall efforts target as many as 58 local officials across seven states facing recall petitions over their decisions on data center permits. Voters in California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas have launched efforts to recall elected officials over their handling of data center proposals. Said one activist, “People feel like this technology is being shoved down our throats.”
The protests have become widespread enough to start affecting Big Tech's ability to build data centers as fast as it wants. Wall Street investors are increasingly treating local and political resistance as a relevant financial variable when deciding whether to underwrite billions in loans for AI data centers. Major financial institutions like Bank of America now evaluate local community backing and permitting status alongside traditional credit and financial checks before committing billions of dollars.
In the first quarter of 2026, local resistance blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion. Data center operator QTS, owned by private equity firm Blackstone, decided not to seek bank financing for its now-terminated Prince William Digital Gateway data center project in Virginia after the project faced stiff local opposition.
Data centers hog electricity and water
Whether the town is conservative or liberal, Democratic or Republican, the reasons for such heated opposition to data centers boil down to the same factors: they use too much water and electricity, threatening to drive up prices for everyone else. They consume huge amounts of land, and also emit a constant hum and chemical wastewater discharges from the facility’s cooling systems. These downsides are being forced upon towns and neighborhoods before residents have a chance to weigh the environmental and social costs. Increasing numbers of people are realizing that the surge in construction is the result of a “strange bedfellows alliance” between US President Donald Trump and more liberal Silicon Valley. With hundreds of billions of dollars being invested, everyone knows there’s a lot of money at stake. A growing sentiment is that local communities' needs are being shoved aside, treated as collateral damage, as President Donald Trump and his Big Tech allies try to command the unfolding gold rush.
These battles will not be settled any time soon. While citizen opposition has delayed and even stopped some construction, the push for massive investment in data centers continues. In the US, planned expenditures on data centers over the next five years are projected to reach $2.4 trillion. The potential benefits and risks of AI are being weighed in real time.
Among the risks are job displacement and environmental concerns, as well as widening educational inequities, since affluent students can access AI’s powerful personalized learning tools while others fall behind. AI has intensified cybersecurity risks by giving malicious actors tools for automated hacking and adaptive malware that can probe systemic vulnerabilities and launch independent rogue attacks.And socially, AI amplifies misinformation, makes public opinion and deepfake impersonation easier to manipulate, and undermines trust in institutions by making truth harder to distinguish from fabrication.
These risks demand serious attention, and numerous leaders in the AI industry recently signed a joint letter calling for government regulation and industry willingness to establish a framework that ensures AI strengthens our society rather than erodes it. The question is whether citizen opposition can push governments to put badly needed guardrails around this still-emerging infrastructure, so harms are greatly reduced, and the benefits can be enjoyed.
Steven Hill was policy director for the Center for Humane Technology, co-founder of FairVote, and political reform director at New America. See more of his writing at his Substack newsletter DemocracySOS.
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Michael Brown Sr. (C-front) leads a march from the location where his son Michael Brown Jr. was shot and killed following a memorial service marking the anniversary of his death on August 9, 2015 in Ferguson, Missouri.
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Twelve Augusts: Grief’s Spiral and the Sacred Work of Remembrance
Aug 28, 2026
Every August comes heavy and hot, and every year it brings me back to Ferguson. To a particular patch of Canfield Drive, where asphalt still seems to pulse with memory, and to the faces—some familiar, some gone—who gathered under a bruised sky after Michael Brown Jr. was killed. It has been twelve years, and I have learned that time does not heal all wounds. It teaches us the difficult choreography of living with them.
I am no longer the pastor of Wellspring Church nor a resident of Ferguson, but that moment, that street, and that season are stitched into the lining of my soul. Like many who stood in the breach that August and beyond, I am forever changed. Yet the anniversary still stalks me. It waits in the marrow. I have come to see this not only as trauma’s residue, but as a call to hold pain and faith, memory and movement together.
The Spiral, Not the Line
We are a nation that likes its narratives linear: wound, struggle, triumph, and then, cleanly, “moving on.” But Dr. William Bridges' seminal book, Transitions, explains that change does not follow an arrow-straight path. Healing, especially collective healing, moves in spirals. We return to the site of pain not because we are stuck, but because reclamation becomes possible there.
Grief, in this sense, is not an obstacle to overcome but a companion to acknowledge. Each August, I walk through the memories with new eyes: the anguish of a mother’s cry, the rage that spilled into streets, the prayers whispered in the darkness, the negotiations—holy and human—between justice and survival. These memories do not fade. They evolve. As Dr. Edward Wimberly’s communal-contextual model suggests, healing is as communal as it is internal. We do not grieve alone. We do not heal alone.
Anniversaries That Haunt—and Heal
Anniversaries are tricky things. For those of us who love or lead, who protest or pastor, they can be both holy days and haunted ones. The calendar’s return to August 9th is not just a date; it’s a collision of past and present. And yet, there is something righteous—something necessary—about returning. I appreciate Dr. J. Scott Butler’s work with African American families and faith communities. He notes that our rituals of remembrance are not simply about not forgetting; they are about turning toward justice, healing, and persistence. We mark the pain so we can measure the progress and the promise it demanded.
Recalibration is not about erasing the hard memories. It is about finding a healthy rhythm—acknowledging the wound without letting it define the whole. I have seen what happens to those who try to outrun their pain: it speeds up, nipping at their heels, bleeding into their relationships and rest. But those who pause, who turn and face it, who remember communally, find a different kind of strength. They reclaim not only their narrative but also their agency.
Living Into Promise
I have been asked, more times than I care to count, what it means to “move forward” from Ferguson. The question itself is a misunderstanding. We do not move forward as if leaving a place behind. We spiral—returning, reflecting, reclaiming, and then stepping into the world again, a little more whole and a little more resolved.
Dr. Stephanie Crumpton, in her womanist pastoral theology, frames this as the sacred work of reclamation. There are points, periods, and places of pain that must be revisited, not to wallow, but to witness. To name what happened, to honor those who suffered, and to insist that the story is not finished. This is righteous recalibration. It is the refusal to let trauma have the last word.
For me, Wellspring was never just a sanctuary for Sunday worship. It was a field hospital, a strategy room, a place where the rawness of grief and the audacity of hope could mingle. Twelve years later, I see that the real work was not about “fixing” the community but about empowering it to claim and transform its wounds. This is what gives anniversaries their sacred power: they force us to reckon with what remains undone, and they invite us to remember what has been survived.
Empowering the Struggle
If you are reading this and carrying your own anniversaries—of loss, of violence, of moments that split your life into before and after—hear me: the spiral does not mean you are failing. It means you are human. It means you are, perhaps, doing the most courageous kind of living. The recalibration of grief is not a denial of pain but a disciplined, even holy, engagement with it.
For some, this engagement might mean returning to the page each year, journaling the surge and echo of anniversary memories. Others may find comfort in creating space for quiet prayer or lighting a candle in remembrance. Some may choose meditation in the mornings of those significant days, or gathering trusted companions to reminisce and bear witness together. These personal practices, humble as they may seem, offer gentle scaffolding as we walk through the spiral, making meaning of the pain and shaping hope from memory.
We show up to the hard places, year after year, so that our communities and we are not defined solely by what broke us. This is both psychological and theological truth. Scholarship reminds us that faith is not the absence of suffering, but the willingness to integrate it into our stories. Likewise, healing is a shared responsibility, and power exists in naming and narrating our pain, especially for those whose suffering has too often been silenced.
Twelve Augusts have come and gone. I have left Ferguson, but Ferguson has never left me. Each anniversary is both an ache and an altar—a place to lay down burdens, gather lessons, remember names, and recalibrate the soul.
We spiral, yes. But we spiral upward, carrying not only pain, but promise—and the call to keep remembering, reclaiming, and becoming, with a steadier and more resolved soul.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, and scholar-practitioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
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